By Dr Alison Smith, St Antony’s College, Oxford Hungary’s Prime Minister, Viktor Orban, celebrated a historic victory today after his right-wing Fidesz/Christian Democrat coalition retained its two-thirds majority in the Hungarian Parliament, winning 133 out of 199 seats.  Fidesz’s nearest competitors, the centre-left alliance, Unity, secured just 38 seats, while the far-right Jobbik won 23 seats.  Full results are available here. The Hungarian election of April 6 2014 was the first to be held under the new electoral system, which almost halved the available number of seats from 386 to 199.  The electoral system remains an ‘unlinked’ (non-compensatory) mixed system, but 106 seats are now allocated through single member districts (SMD), while 93 are allocated through party lists.  The new system is less …

On Saturday 10th March 2012, Slovakia joined the small but growing club of European countries that elected a majority government despite using a proportional representation system.  The centre-left Smer party, led by Robert Fico, won 86 out of 150 seats with 44.9% of the vote.  Although it was predicted that Smer would win the election, even Fico himself was surprised by the scale of the result. Since the eurozone crisis started to bite, strong anti-incumbency sentiments have regularly produced extreme results. In Hungary, Fidesz won more than a two-thirds majority in parliament in 2010 with 68% of the popular vote.  In Scotland, a proportional electoral system unexpectedly produced a majority government in 2011, when the Scottish Nationalist Party (SNP) won 69 out of 129 seats with 45% of …